Sunday, 26 August 2012

At a public talk at the Australian
Astronomical Observatory in Sydney
in July, Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt described how our universe is
rapidly expanding. Professor Schmidt said only 4.5 per cent of the universe is
made up of things we can see while the rest is invisible. Dark matter makes up
24 per cent and dark energy the remaining 72 per cent. Once this dark energy
takes over, it will cause more space to expand, creating more dark energy,
"which can then push harder against gravity, creating even more
space".

"The creation of space eventually can
happen even more quickly than light can travel."

This could lead to one of the
"craziest theoretical ideas" and one of Professor Schmidt's
favourites - the Big Rip.

The professor said “This “Big Rip” might be the way our universe ends and it
may happen on literally a human time scale" in other words Professor
Schmidt is supporting concepts that I have already published in books and
blogs. The expansion of the universe may lead to the universe “dissolving”
before our eyes; which is an extension of the hypothesis that I previously
published and my blog of June 2012. Obviously the good professor is only about
a month late in repeating what I had published.

In my June blog I explained how in an
expanding universe in order to calculate the universe’s gravitational field we
must multiply the distance by Hubble’s constant. This does not mean much to
most people until we come to examine just what happens to the effect of a gravitational
field when we accelerate.

The strength of a gravitational field is
inversely proportional to the square of the distance, which simply means that as we
move away the field weakens and it weakens twice as quickly as the distance
increases. This is why a rocket launched at what we call “escape velocity” will
never fall; its speed causes it to continue until the gravitational field is
too weak to pull it back. The attached graphic shows how doubling the speed of
a rocket does not double the height it attains: instead it increases by a ratio
that is equal to the square of the increase.

The same thing can happen to the universe
as a whole, the acceleration of the universe’s expansion will reach a point
where gravity is no longer able to keep the galaxies, stars and planets
together. The entire structure will dissolve into random atomic particles
drifting apart in space. Just like a rocket reaching escape velocity the
disintegration of the universe could suddenly reach a tipping point and vanish
before our eyes. In fact this is what the Bible says will happen, “The first
Heaven and Earth will pass away’. Just imagine the surprise, first the Bible
was right about creation, the universe did have a beginning, now scientists are
starting to realise that it may end just as predicted.